Panther in the Sky (91 page)

In the medicine lodge that night, Open Door sat before a cedarwood fire, his eye closed, and tried to open his soul to the messages from above. He had asked his wife to come into the lodge
with him, to aid his concentration by guarding the door against intruders and to hand him the sacred artifacts he might need as he communed with the Messenger Spirits. He still had true faith and was sure he would be guided in time.

Open Door long ago had learned that trying to force messages to come only drove them farther away. So he pretended that he was not trying to force them to come, though in fact by his mental straining he was. As he sat facing the fire, he seemed to hear with his mind the marching feet of Harrison’s army. But this was not a real sound. Outside there was only the quiet noise of the village, the rustling of the last clinging oak leaves in the night wind. Harrison’s army would not be marching at night, and it was after all on the far side of the river. Open Door told himself he must calm his imagination, or he would never perceive the messages when they did come. He murmured his chants and tried to draw the voice of the Great Good Spirit down to himself.

After a while, eye still shut, he spoke softly to his wife and asked her to bring him his sacred medicine fire stick and the beaded bag that contained the
nilu famu,
sacred tobacco. He felt them being put into his hands. He laid the stick upon one thigh, opened the neck of the bag, and pinched out a bit of the powdered tobacco. Then he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, dusting the tobacco into the fire before him. He smelled it burning and knew its sacred smoke was now rising out of the smokehole into the night, and he put his prayer into the smoke, that it might be carried to heaven.

Again now he felt his heart growing quick and light.

Yes! Soon he would know! At last the Messenger was about to visit him again with wisdom and guidance!

Open Door saw a light growing in the darkness. It was an irregular, shifting light, darkening now and then as if something were passing before it. Open Door breathed slowly to soothe his soul so that the image would form.

And after a while he saw that the light was a white tent gleaming in the light of a great bonfire.

Now Open Door saw that it was an army tent, of the sort he had seen at the Fallen Timbers.

In the image the tent was among big trees. There were people lying in blankets on the ground around it and many bonfires burning. The people in the blankets were soldiers. Many of them were not moving, not even breathing; others lay with their eyes and mouths wide open, turning their heads upon their necks like madmen, rolling their eyeballs.

Now, as if he were walking toward the tent’s door, he saw it grow closer. But it was not himself going toward the tent. He felt himself to be far back behind the person who was moving toward the tent, yet seeing it through his own eye looking through the eyes of the one going there.

Now the person was inside the tent, and there upon a bed lay Harrison the governor, asleep.

Open Door heard a rapid heartbeat. He felt in his hand a handle. It was not the fire stick he actually held in his hand, but a handle made of horn from an antler. It was the handle of a knife.

In the light that diffused through the cloth of the tent, he saw Harrison’s eyes open, those strange eyes that were so hard to look at, and the eyes saw the knife.

Suddenly with a surge of power and a grunting breath, the carrier of the knife struck at Harrison’s breast with it. The knife went through the blanket and between ribs and into the heart. His mouth opened to emit a cry, but only blood came forth.

Open Door felt a hand on his shoulder shaking him hard. He opened his eye and saw his wife’s fat face before him, full of alarm.

“What, woman?” he exclaimed. “Why do you disturb me?”

“You cried out.”

“Woman! Leave me alone!” he groaned. He was furious. At last he had been permitted to glimpse the event, but this stupid woman had disrupted it.

She looked very hurt. “I was afraid you were going to fall and … and go away as you did the first time.…”

“I was! I was! I was away! I meant to be! Go,” he whined. “Go home!”

He tried then, late into the night, to return to the vision, but Weshemoneto did not let him see any more.

But Open Door was heartened. The Great Good Spirit had told him a very important thing: that Harrison could—and surely would—be killed in his tent at night. And that the soldiers around him could not protect him because, it seemed, some were dead and the rest crazy!

F
IRST IT WAS ONE DISTANT CRY IN THE DRONE OF AFTERNOON
, then more voices spread the cry of alarm, and in a few seconds the cries were shrieking down through Prophet’s Town:

“The Long Knives! The army is here!” The people were stampeding. The town was in a turmoil.

From his medicine lodge, Open Door, dismayed, could now see them coming. They were more than a mile away yet, and only
the Leathershirts scouting in advance of the main army were clearly visible, but, yes! The army was in sight, the lines and masses moving slowly in the hazy distance through the gray, leafless woods, and the horror of it was that they were not on the other side of the Wabash, but on this bank! Charcoal Burner’s scouts had discovered only this morning that the army had apparently crossed the river somewhere far down and had been coming unseen along the north bank for days. There was nothing between Harrison’s approaching army but the mouth of one narrow, shallow creek and a mile of marshes and harvested corn fields!

As the war chiefs gathered around Open Door, he had all he could do to mask his fright and despair. No wonder was it that the Miamis he had sent down with a message to Harrison had not returned with a reply. They had missed the oncoming army entirely. And the time Open Door had hoped to gain by parley was lost. Now the enemy was here. The dark lines of troops could be clearly seen coming out of the cottonwoods and sycamores and the willow thickets into the fields: horsemen first, hundreds of them, then the twin lines of Blue-Coat walking soldiers, at this distance seeming hardly to move, yet coming into view across the gray-brown landscape. There could be no parley with them at a safe distance from the town, no way to persuade them to stay down the river, no way to stall them until more warriors could come from Illinois or Mis-i-ken, no way to ambush them from the woods at some creek crossing, no way to slip into Harrison’s camp and kill him in his bed.… They were here, marching upon his sacred town, and Open Door had no plan, now. His head was full of a silent scream.

But the vision! Weshemoneto had shown him what to do; had even Weshemoneto tricked him?

Why? he cried in his heart. Is our cause not right?

I have tried to be the best of all holy men!

I have been sober and have sacrificed myself for six years for my People and kept them out of conflict and given them hope and happiness! Have I not been worthy?

Now the American army was changing shape to the sound of drums and shouted orders from the distance, forming into ranks and marching straight toward the holy town with flags and bayonets, stepping in unison, coming closer and closer. The people in the town were weeping and rushing about, gathering their children, seeking their loved ones, bundling things up. Star Watcher stood near her brother, watching him.

“Father,” cried a warrior beside Open Door, “what will you have us do? Tell us!”

The Prophet hid his hands beneath his robe and wrung them to stop them from shaking. He must think of something now. He had never meant for war to come right into his town! He had always believed that Harrison would stop and talk.…

Charcoal Burner came riding up from the river, shouting for the people to get out of the way of his excited horse. He reined in, staring at Open Door, eyes wild, his whole being demanding some answer, some guidance at last, and finally he said, “They mean to attack now. They must be delayed, Father, they must be delayed until we can move the people to safety!”

Delayed. Yes. Suddenly Open Door braced himself. Had not the Great Good Spirit shown him that Harrison
would
die in his bed? Therefore it could
not
end here this way!

Quickly Open Door pointed out six chieftains and one who could speak English. “Go and show your hand for parley. Tell the Long Knives we are surprised to find them here, and our feelings are hurt. Tell them they must come no farther because they put our women and children in danger. That we would like to know what they want. That we invite them to camp near us in peace, and will parley with them tomorrow and find out what they wish us to do.…”

“Now! Parley now, not tomorrow!” Star Watcher urged.

“I have a reason,” Open Door replied, then said to the messengers, “Tell them I sent Miamis many days ago to ask them this, but they came up the wrong side of the river. Charcoal Burner, what say you to doing this to halt them where they are?”

“Yes,” said Charcoal Burner. “There is hope in this. Perhaps it is not too late even now to get the people away. If Harrison can make his soldiers stop. If he
will!”

T
ECUMSEH WAS PAINTED BLACK; HIS WAR CLUB WAS PAINTED
red. He wore only his crane feather headdress, loincloth, sheathed knife, and a pouch. He walked, very erect, toward the pole in the center of the council ground, before which a small fire burned, and his warriors, decorated in the same way, followed him in a single file.

Smoke from the fire rose toward the stars. In the sky stood the long-tailed star, now grown so long and big that it cast light like that of a full moon.

Thousands of warriors of the upper Creek nation stood on the
edges of the field and watched, lit by bigger bonfires around the perimeter of the field.

From one side of the field now entered their principal chief Big Warrior, to meet Tecumseh by the fire. He carried a pipe, and a warrior behind him carried a bowl of coals. Tecumseh remembered when he had first seen Big Warrior, many years ago when he had come to Tuckabatchee Town to find his mother. Tecumseh here found another dream manifest. Something, maybe a disease in the years since Tecumseh had seen him, had caused his skin to fade in spots, as Tecumseh had seen. His nose was broad and flat, his jaw wide and square as a box.

They lit the pipe from the fire carrier’s bowl and smoked to the Four Winds. In the silence of this ceremony, Tecumseh could feel the power and even the mood of Big Warrior beside him. Big Warrior was not very pleased with Tecumseh, who had come here more than a week ago to address the full autumn council of the Creeks, then had postponed his speech day after day because two white men had been present. At last one of the white men, the Indian agent Colonel Hawkins, had grown tired of waiting and left. But the other, a frontiersman named Samuel Dale, seemed to have nothing else to do but wait around, and at last Tecumseh had decided that he must go ahead with his plea anyway, even if a white man did hear it Dale sat among the chiefs on the other side of the field now, and Tecumseh could feel his presence waiting. But white man or no, Tecumseh was going to talk war. He could not dally any longer; there were still hundreds of miles to go.

These Creeks were his mother’s people. Tecumseh had fame among them, and they were not so bound to the whites as the Chickasaws and Choctaws were. In the Revolutionary War they had fought against the Americans. Big Warrior was on good terms with the Indian agent Hawkins but only pretended to like him. The danger of holding his war council while Hawkins was here would have been extreme, for the agent was a friend of President Madison; Tecumseh had learned that Madison and Hawkins had been something called classmates at someplace called Princeton. Whatever that was, it surely meant that Hawkins would tell the president if he heard Shawnee war talk in the great fall council of the peaceful Creek nation. Tecumseh expected to talk to Madison himself after the confederation was complete; he did not want him to know anything yet. This man Dale would probably report to Hawkins and Hawkins to the president, but there was nothing Tecumseh could do about it now.

Big Warrior laid the pipe across his arm, nodded once to Tecumseh, and then turned and went off the field.

Now Tecumseh and his warriors went to one quadrant of the field, and there they took crumbled tobacco and sumac leaves from their pouches and sprinkled it on the ground. They went on around the circle, doing this at each quadrant to sanctify the ground and keep bad spirits out of the council. Then, as the hushed crowd looked on, they returned to the pole in the center, went around it, and then shook the rest of the tobacco from the pouches into the fire. When they had done this, they were standing in a small circle around the pole, with the small fire smoking in their midst, large bonfires around them, the dense circle of Creek warriors around the council ground, the sprawling town of Tuckabatchee nearby, and the Tallapoosa River flowing deep and quiet nearby with the long star reflecting off its misty surface.

Suddenly this hush was rent by a pulsating shriek. Tecumseh’s war cry then was magnified by the tremolo voices of his two dozen warriors, a chorus more fierce and primal than that of a wolf pack at twilight. The drumbeats began pounding like a great heartbeat, and the warriors leaped into the stalking posture. They moved in unison, following Tecumseh: a toe pointed and placed delicately upon the earth, then the heel set down, while the muscular bodies moved slowly in exaggerated postures of stealth, eyes darting left and right. Then the other foot, toe down, then heel down, arms slowly moving as if parting the foliage of a place of ambush, and the only sound the heartbeat pulse of the drum. In the circle they stalked their enemy, and the Creeks were with them in their hearts, feeling the tension build, hearing the tempo of the drumbeat gradually quicken.

Then the tremolo cry again, and at once the drum was pounding rapidly, taking the people’s heartbeats up with it, and the dancing warriors were springing, crouching, whirling, swinging their clubs, and stabbing with their flashing knives. No warrior who had ever surprised and attacked an enemy, no youth who had ever dreamed of doing it, could fail to respond to the sight of those postures, those gestures, to imagine themselves this swift, this powerful, this fearless in the attack. The dancers yipped with every sudden move; they sprang shoulder high from the ground and landed crouched, grimacing, their eyes mad and mouths wolfish; they bounded forward, grappling with imaginary foes, stabbing them, then spun about to kill enemies behind them. So swift and hard were their strokes that the dance had had to be rehearsed and coordinated and practiced over and over, or these
dancers with their flashing, naked blades might have hurt or killed each other in performance.